I'm not snipping any one email, as it's the general subject I'm replying to.
I am pretty left handed. Even though I live in a right handed world, I struggle to do things right handed. As an adult, I've found that I've picked up the ability (somewhat) to watch what a right hander is doing and transfer it around, but it takes me a while. The day I learned how to do french knots was because an acquaintance was making a french knot sheep on a piece of embroidery she was making and doing hundreds of french knots. I watched her (a right hander) for about an hour and a half, when finally my mind was able to twist it around and I figured out how to do it. I was over thirty at the time, and had been doing embroidery since I was 8. And even though I finally know how to do a french knot, it took me 8 years of doing needle lace before I finally figured out that some of the picots in modern needle lace are really just french knots. See, all the pictures in the books were made for right handers, and my picots always fell apart. Since I finally made the connection, I've done my left-handed french knot, and not had any picot fall apart since. I have another acquaintance that's even more "left oriented" than I am. She had a standard transmission (aka stick shift) car she loved, but she almost couldn't learn to drive it when she first obtained it because she couldn't figure out how to coordinate her left hand to work that way. I think some of us left handers who are older, who grew up in a world of "one hand fits all" where we had to turn the scissors upside down to cut paper, who had (school) teachers teach us the worst way possible to hold our papers so we had to learn to write upside down and backwards (and they probably did that because they didn't know there would be a difference to how to tilt the paper), who had to learn to peel potatoes backwards because the blade was only sharp on one side of the peeler, I think we had to develop a bit of plasticity. We *had* to learn to use our right hands, at least to a certain extent. (And I'm not even going into the people who were forced to be right handers when they were really left handers.) But today there's a lot more acceptance for left handers. We are allowed to exist. There are few (if any) stories of "I started left handed but when I went to school the teachers forced me to be right handed" in the under 30 demographic. There are a lot more ambidextrous and left hand only tools (scissors, peelers, etc). This means we have to be more sensitive to the people who don't have the plasticity to learn just by looking at something reversed. I know, in my own body-mind connection, that I can't "just look in a mirror" or "just sit opposite" somebody else. There is a difference in the way I view the world. And while I now have a lot more plasticity and CAN eventually "get it", as a child I hadn't developed that skill yet. As a 6 year old, trying to learn how to crochet, I didn't even have the words to say, "I don't know what you are doing, can you just let me watch you for two hours and see if I can figure it out myself?" (Not that I had the attention span to sit and just watch somebody for two hours.) We were talking about teaching children lace, so we could pass on a dying art. I was just trying to caution that not all people can learn from one style, and that, when confronted with "just sit opposite and you'll learn", that there are some people, children and adults, who can't do that, and we'd lose somebody who might otherwise become a great lace maker. I *can* crochet now, because of a left handed teacher when I was in high school. I've tried at least five times over my adult life to crochet and see if I can learn to enjoy it. I've made at least a dozen things in those five periods, including two blankets. And, I found I still hate crochet. Since I don't do bobbin lace, I don't know if it's a mostly ambidextrous activity. What I've seen, when I've watched friends who do bobbin lace, is that they usually use their right hands to insert the pins and move the bobbins. Does that translate well to a left hander trying to learn? I don't know. I do know as a left hander, trying to teach right handers some needle lace, there have been some issues with understanding what I was saying. Because of that, I've taken on teaching myself how to do the lace right handed, so I can show right handers. But even in that, I find I'm going at it "left handed" (backwards). At least, from the feedback I've been given. Just my two cents, since I started the whole thread. :) Bronwen -- "Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." - Albert Einstein - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
